Biowarfare alert: Is a mass bio-terror pandemic planned for 2012?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite America’s dubious history of using the population as a test tube for all sorts of crazy things, plans to release what it claims is a harmless bacteria in the Boston subway system this year as a way to test biological sensors, and at least some folks think it may be the start of a bio-terror pandemic with sinister implications.

In an early May report, CBS News/Boston said federal officials “test the subway sensors by releasing dead bacteria called B-subtilis. They say it is used in food supplements, has been rigorously tested and has no adverse health effects for low exposure in healthy people.”

The unknown variable here, then, is what sort of an effect will this bacteria have on unhealthy people – will they be able to handle it? Will it make them sicker?

According to the CBS News report, the test will be conducted in Cambridge and Somerville during off peak hours sometime this summer; DHS held a public hearing on May 16 at the Cambridge YMCA in Central Square, to allow the public to ask questions and voice concerns over the test.

Later in the month, Boston mass transit police hailed the test as forward-thinking and said it was a proactive, rather than reactive, measure.